Salesforce buys social media platform Radian6

Enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce has acquired social media monitoring platform Radian6 for approximately $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock, the companies have announced.

Additionally, approximately $10M in stock and $4M in cash will be issued to founders and will be subject to vesting conditions over two years. The acquisition has been approved by Radian6′s board of directors and stockholders and is expected to close by July 31, 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.

“With Radian6, salesforce.com is gaining the technology and market leader in social media monitoring,” chairman and CEO of Salesforce Marc Benioff said in the company’s announcement.

This is the third large acquisition in recent months by Salesforce, which has acquired Ruby cloud platform Heroku for $212 million in December. That same month, Salesforce also acquired contact management startup Etacts for an undisclosed amount, and in January, the company scooped up web conferencing service Dimdim for $31 million.

Social media management and monitoring space has been the center of several large investments and acquisitions lately. In February, Vitrue secured $17 million in funding, while Buddy Media raised $23 million last October.